The Unforsaken Road
by incorrigiblyinsistent
Summary: If someone ran screaming that the beautiful and friendly cat-lady Elena Gilbert in 13B was a paid assassin from Eastern Europe hired by the notorious mob boss Mikael Mikaelson down the streets of Cobble Hill in Brooklyn, New York New York, the reaction would end up on CNN. AU/AH


**Hi! I don't particularly know why I'm writing this but everyone else does, so helloooooo. I'm Catie. I like to write, apparently. You can thank Veronica, Josie, and a Caskett AU graphic on tumblr for this.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing, which is weird considering I could have sworn that I bought Damon Salvatore for Christmas. (Bad jokes are funny shut your face.)**

To say that the day started off bad for Elena would be a colossal understatement.

Unless you counted spilling your coffee on your clothes when you're already ten minutes late for your first morning class then to find out not even 15 minutes later that your Metro Card has no more money on it and being 30 minutes late to the pretentious but interesting sociology class you're being forced take by your pushy best friend at nine am sharp and having to walk to the nearest empty seat (which was in the very back) in a pair of heels that hadn't sound that loud when she'd first put them on in an otherwise empty room full of 27 people following your every move a _good_ morning. (And if you do then you need to work on that.)

Sighing in relief as everyone's gazes slid from hers and back to the professor, Elena sat her bag down and slumped into the empty chair. She had just begun to pull out a notebook and a pen when she looked down at the person below hers notebook when she realized that she'd missed more than half a class amount of note taking. "Fucking Christ," she groaned under her breath, wanting to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge for the fifth time this morning.

She was so caught up in plotting her own half-hearted suicide attempt that she almost didn't hear the soft and husky chuckle that came from beside her. But she did. And she almost died.

Staring back at her were the bluest eyes she'd ever seen, which were surrounded by some completely unfair dark and thick lashes. And after a few seconds of shameless staring into those deep pools of blue that made her want to strip and cry all at the same time – there really wasn't a less smutty romance novel-y way to describe it, much to Elena's shame – her eyes flickered to other parts of the eye's beholders everything. Upon her eye's journey (Mission: find Adonis reincarnate.)

Elena discovered thick raven locks that looked like they were owned by someone who had just rolled out of bed – Or had just had sex. That was plausible and probable, too. – a pair of pink lips that were caught in a very attractive and crooked and _cocky_ smirk, to die for cheekbones, alabaster skin, and jaw line that made Elena discover what her best friend, Caroline, meant when she said that someone had a "lickable jaw line."

Oh, Hell. She just had to meet the most physically attractive person she's seen in a long time when she looked like a steamroller had partied all over her face, didn't she? It was then that she realized that those perfect, perfect lips (This was really getting out of hand. Fan your vagina, Elena, fan it like never before!) had opened to create words. Blinking, Elena said most eloquently, "What?" (That earned a loud "shh!" from the studious-looking girl that probably was a hooker on the weekends in the row in front of her.)

There came that husky and soft chuckle, but this time actual words actually came along, too. "I said," he whispered in a voice that was both rough and smooth – how was that even possible – "that you could borrow my notes after class. For a little something in return, of course."

Oh yes, he was definitely cocky. He oozed it. Elena's eyes sparkled, the desire to bruise his ego just a little bit coming to play. Raising an eyebrow, Elena returned his statement with a quick, "My fee is a thousand an hour. Not including the kinky shit or cuddling."

Surprise flickered in his eyes as a choked laugh rumbled out of his throat. "I was just going to ask if we could go to Café Dante on MacDoungal for some coffee and gelato, but if that's what you want, well. I've always prided myself on putting ladies wishes first." His gaze turned into a leer, the smirk on what Elena already knew was turned to full-force on the dial of intentional panty-dropping.

Her face was the color of a prostitute's lipstick, she knew it. "Cocky," was all she could come up with. It was pathetic really. Since when had Elena ever been so caught up in someone's looks that she lost more than half of her wits? Oh, that's right. Three minutes ago.

"Confident, my dear, not cocky," was his only response. (And that's if you didn't count the playful twinkle in his eyes, which Elena certainly did not.)

"Oh no, you're definitely cocky. It's in the way you speak and sit. Trust me, I've known enough people to recognize cocky when I see it."

"Well then I'll just have to prove you wrong."

"I'd love to see that, actually."

What is happening? Is this what Elena thinks it is? Is she actually flirting for the sake of flirting with a hot guy? And enjoying it?

"Today, after class then. I'll give you the notes that you missed and we can discover just how un-cocky I am together." The smirk was back. The cocky smirk was back, and somewhere inside was Elena's 13-year-old self was screeching.

"Fine, but you do realize that we've probably missed about fifty extra bullet notes what with your _utterly selfless generosity _and with the rate that he's going, we'll probably have just missed twenty more by the time I finish this sentence."

His already large eyes grow larger and he mumbles a "shit" under his breath before returning his attention back to board whete the professor had finally begun to realize that the pair hadn't been paying attention to his lecture.

"I'm sorry. Was I interrupting you two?" Professor Shane asked, blinking his cold and dead eyes up at Cocky and me.

"Nope, sorry, Professor," Elena said smoothly, lacing her chin on her linked hands, barely holding in the smug smile that she know is twitching on her lips.

"Hmm," is all Shane says in response. Ah, she hated this guy so much it actually made her laugh. If he mysteriously disappeared she wouldn't mind at all, Elena thought callously.

"It's Damon, by the way," Cocky – Damon - said next to her, making Elena blink slowly in surprise. Had they really not exchanged names? Jesus she was slow today.

"Elena," she returned, a faint smile stretched across her lips.

"So how come I haven't seen you in class before?" Elena tried to ask around the gelato she'd stuffed into her mouth. "Your ego is so big you would've thought that I'd've seen you before."

Damon rolled his eyes as he listened to me. "I usually sit in the back and get there pretty early. Besides, even if I didn't, you wouldn't have noticed me. Your blonde chatterbox of a friend keeps you too occupied to spy little old me. Where was she today, by the way? You two usually are attached at the hip."

She gave a very un-lady like snort and shook her head. "You mean Caroline? And she was sick—wait. What the fuck? Were you, I don't know, spying on me?"

Those last words had made him choke on the steamy hot coffee he'd just sipped, but it couldn't hide the mirth Elena saw dancing around in those eyes of his. "What?' he chortled. "You? Me? Me, spy on you? Please, honey. I'm not some fourteen year old who has no extracurricular activities and is obsessively crushing on some hot older college girl. I just notice the hot ones, that's all. Especially when they come in pairs. Never know when knowing two hot best girl friends will come in handy, you know?"

Elena growled at that last part and flicked some of the surviving whipped cream from her coffee at his stupidly beautiful face, satisfied only when it hit him square in the face. "Oh my god!" Elena managed to get out through her laughter. "that was—" choking laughter "the single best things I-I've ever done, ever."

"Then we've obviously never had a drunken-but-passionate one-night tryst that we both mysteriously forgot about," Damon said drily as he wiped the whipped cream off his face. "'Cause that would've probably been the single best thing you'd ever done instead of _that_, even if neither of us remembered it."

"What are you, a dog in heat? In the last, uhhhm, fifty minutes you've made at least 100 sexual innuendos. If you want to excuse yourself to use the little boy's room to relieve yourself because my hotness is just too much, be my guest. I'm no sadist; I heard blue-balls are particularly painful."

"Christ, and you call _me _cocky."

"You know you still haven't convinced me that you're confident but not cocky, yet. And we haven't even mentioned the notes that I missed."

"I was hoping you'd forget about those things, to be honest, and just hang out with me for me." Oh shit. Shit fuck shit. Elena forced a scoff, trying to seem unaffected. "Oh, come one. Really? You're giving me puppy-dog eyes? Do you really think that's going to work on me?"

"Yes."

"Cocky."

"No, 'Lena. Confident. Confidence, it's what I have. I've done it before, and it's worked."

"On who? Horny cougars who troll around in bars? Please."

"No," Damon scoffed. "My mother. And now you."

"Shut up."

"You're very bossy. Tell me, 'Lena, are you secretly a dominatrix? I like a woman who can top." And there it was for about the hundredth time today, that stupid smirk that somehow seemed even more rakish and moronically charming than the other 99 times.

Elena widened her eyes and looked up at him through her lashes. Bottom lip dropped slightly annnd… Damon was a goner. The smirk dropped immediately as soon as he saw the forced tears that threatened to spill over onto her cheeks.

"Elena, I-I'm sorry I'm such a dick. Really I don't even know what comes out of my mouth sometimes, I have absolutely no filter. Shit I'm really sorry and hey—why are you laughing?"

The guilty drooping of his eyes and the apologetic rambling stopped screeched to a halt as soon as Elena had let the first chord of her laughter spill from her lips. The once worried look had all but vanished from sight now, an incredulous look now owning his face.

"Really? All those tears were fake? Jesus. You are a very dangerous woman, Elena."

It was an innocent description, but it still made Elena's blood run cold. But before her discomfort could become visible to Damon's far-too insightful eyes, she forced a smirk of her own before switching the topic to Professor Shane and the unfairness of the essay that was due tomorrow.

"This isn't fair," Damon wailed into Elena's soaked pillow as the said owner of said soaked pillow rubbed the crying man's back in circular motions, fighting her own tears at the injustice they had both witnessed.

"Éponine s-shouldn't have d-died, she was the best character! And Gavroche. Oh my god why? I don't want to live in this world anymore Elena why did this happen to us? Why would anyone make anything as painful as this? Why?"

At this point of Damon's emotional breakdown he was curled up on Elena' lap couch rocking back and forth of his side, his face pressed into her pillow, moaning. It was not a pretty sight, and any of Damon's conquests from earlier that week wouldn't have recognized the hysterical man as the suave and sexy man who had made them seen stars in his bedroom.

"Don't forget about Valjean." And at that, Damon let out a choked sob and promptly rolled off the couch onto the floor.

It had been three months since their first meeting, and the two were acted like they'd been best friends since they were in the sandbox. It was odd, to say the least; Elena had always been friendly and warm, but becoming insanely close with someone you haven't even known a month was unheard of.

Her job made her distance herself from nearly everyone in her life, never getting past one night stands and cold and empty politeness, never affected by anything. Cool and collected. But then Damon barged into her life, all snark, intuition, and sex and he wormed his way into Elena's heart so quickly, and it threw her off kilter and made her land on her face.

At first Elena had pushed him away; sat in the front in their sociology class with Caroline, getting in late and leaving as soon as Professor Shane dismissed them, dodged his calls, and when he called her name as she all but ran away from class looking for all the world like a lost puppy, pretended she didn't hear. It wasn't until he cornered her – in her own house, much to her own shame – banging on her door at five in the morning, swearing like a trucker and just as loudly as one, his eyes like icicles, pinning her in place that she finally let him in.

(Although it had taken her cat, Arriane, longer to warm up to him than her owner; waking her up at five in the morning with your fists and incessant shouting of swears through the door was a capital offense in the black cat's grass green eyes.)

And now, here they were. One of them was drunker than a skunk, on the floor, and moaning about how much Les Misérables was much too painful to ever be shown to the public, and the other was watching the other with amusement as she sipped her hot cocoa and petted Arriane.

"You know what's even worse," Damon rambled from his position on the floor, "is that _fucking bastard_" his voice rose so that he could be heard through the ceiling, "who is blasting that album Some Nights! I mean, shit, it's a good album but it hit's home waaay to hard. It just connects with Les Mis so m-much, you know what I mean, 'Lena? Like, it's all about war and loneliness and that it just. Bullshit. That's what this is. Fucking bullshit." Damon turned his head so he could face Elena, his eyes wide and crazy, pouting adorably.

"Right, totally. Fucking bullshit is right," she confirmed. It seemed to placate him, because the next thing she knew he was next to her, his face only a breath away.

"You know what we should do right now?"

"Nope, not a clue," Elena gulped, wide-eyed.

"We should totally make-out."

"Oh! You—" Elena screeched as she picked up a pillow and slammed it on top of his head and his shaking shoulders. "You are incorrigible, I swear to God. Do you really flip the switch that easily?"

"Yes. I'm like that guy in your vampire show. All dark and sexy and evil to the core like." Damon grinned as he ducked from the pillow that was once again aimed toward his head, laughing even harder as he waggled his eyebrows in her direction.

"Oh, okay. Ian is not evil, excuse you. He turned off the switch, okay? That doesn't mean that he's evil to the core. He lived a hard life and he just wants to be loved, okay? Christ I've told you this a million times." Elena narrowed her eyes, keeping the pillow close to her if she needed to thwack Damon with it again.

"You're so weird, 'Lena, I swear. And those people on tumblr don't help—"

"—you have a tumblr too, you asshole!"

"— to be honest it's actually quite unhealthy. If it wasn't for that Nina chick with the nice ass and those tits of hers—"

"—are you objectifying her body, Damon, you know how I feel about those comments—"

"—I'd stage an intervention. And yeah, yeah, I know. You're a part time fandom blogger and a part time social justice blogger. Chill yourself."

"You sound like my brother. 'Chill yourself.' It's a term in the language of stoners, you know."

"Your brother is chill."

"Because he's always high, you dumbass!"

"I don't see your point, babe."

"You're infuriating."

"And yet you're still letting me stay the night," Damon said as he lept up from the couch and swaggered his way to tiny guest bedroom they had dubbed as his bedroom.

"You know, if you insult my baby one more time I'm kicking you out."

Damon turned on his heel, and grinned maniacally. Shit, this won't end up well. "Ian is will never be loved." Elena screamed, and grabbed her pillow just as Damon tore his shirt off and pulled down his pants, leaving a completely naked Damon and a pissed off and now turned on Elena. Well fuck. "Good night, babe!" Damon shouted over to a stunned Elena (who still clutched the pillow in one hand) before he grinned one last time at her, and shut the door.

If someone ran screaming that the beautiful and friendly cat-lady Elena Gilbert in 13B was a paid assassin from Eastern Europe hired by the notorious mob boss Mikael Mikaelson down the streets of Cobble Hill in Brooklyn, New York New York, the reaction would end up on CNN.

It would consist of three outraged shouts mixed in with some swears from the three old Italian men who wore gold chains and sweat suits and ran the deli on the corner, a scoff of contempt from the perpetually high college senior who is still bitter that she turned him down when she first moved into town two years ago, and a bullet in the head from one particularly sweet-looking 80-something year old woman who is the exact definition of a "granny." (She even has hard candy in her purse that smells like moth balls and cheap perfume.)

Not that anyone would do that, of course. Like anyone would actually suspect _Elena Gilbert_ to be a trained killer, what with those big doe eyes of hers, that sweet smile of hers that lights up the entire city, Hell she even babysits the 10 year old brat pack from the apartment below hers. For free!

But should anyone even get even the crazy idea that Elena is snipping people's gold thread for money and believe it, it won't be the unsusceptible and loyal granny that's putting a bullet through their head, but rather the long-legged beauty they said such _blasphemous_ things about.

All of this was known by Elena as she made her way up the stairs to the tenth-floor penthouse in Manhattan, cursing her stupidity to wear her gorgeous but new oxford heels that day. But Mikael Mikaelson wasn't one to be ignored when you were summoned, and so there she was, climbing the stairs to her number one client in heels that needed to be broken in so badly that she almost wanted to cry.

(Crying wasn't an option, not for her, especially not in front of the man who was fonder of her than any other assassin he knew, and gave her tips based on how quick and clean she was with her work.)

"Elena," the disembodied voice with an unmistakable English accent came from a shadowy corner came the second she opened the door. "You got my message, then?"

"The one where you _asked_" she raised her eyebrows, "me to come see you today? Yeah, I got that one. Along with the three other calls from your minions," Elena added drily.

"Tsk, tsk, not need to be caustic, Miss _Gilbert_," Mikael said. "Do you want to hear your assignment, or not?"

"Fine, lay it on me." _I'm in need of more rent money_, anyways, Elena thought.

"Good girl," he purred, and it was all she could do not to let lips curl in disgust. The only man who could purr and get away with it was Damon, and that's because Elena is convinced that he is part kitty.

A picture was thrown across the room and out of reflex, Elena caught it. Scowling, she turned it over and what she saw knocked the breath out of her. Staring back at her were the too blue to be true eyes that she'd seen almost every day for the last couple of months.

"That, my dearest Elena, is your new assignment."

Fuck.


End file.
